


the ways we grow together

by pleasekalemenow



Series: Lyf Rights? Discuss. [2]
Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Body Horror, But only a little, Canon-Typical Violence, Comedy, Farce, Fluff and Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Hanahaki-Typical Body Horror, Miscommunication, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Lyfrassir Rights, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Pining, Unrequited Love, honestly a little less than typical, non-graphic orgy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23058976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasekalemenow/pseuds/pleasekalemenow
Summary: “Von Raum.” Lyf’s wary greeting each time they come to visit the cell.“Inspector Lyf.” Marius plays into exactly what they expect him to be. He goes out of his way to be obnoxious, making sure Lyf stays at a distance, and if Lyf just happens to be really fucking cute when they’re frustrated...well. Marius can hardly complain when his mouth is full of beautiful balsams.---Lyfrassir Edda has had Hanahaki disease three times by the time they turn twenty years old, and while that sets a pretty poor precedent in and of itself, with them racking up two more cases by graduation, they didn’t think they’d ever have an entire garden growing inside them at once. Let alone, for their prisoners.
Relationships: Ivy Alexandria/Raphaella la Cognizi, Lyfrassir Edda/Ivy Alexandria, Lyfrassir Edda/Marius von Raum, Lyfrassir Edda/Prison Mechs, Lyfrassir Edda/Raphaella la Cognizi, Marius von Raum/Ivy Alexandria, Marius von Raum/Raphaella la Cognizi, Poly Mechs
Series: Lyf Rights? Discuss. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652932
Comments: 89
Kudos: 156
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CertifiedPissWizard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedPissWizard/gifts).



Lyfrassir Edda has been visiting the cell of Marius von Raum, Raphaella la Cognizi, and Ivy Alexandria for only a few months when it first happens.

Raphaella mocks him particularly relentlessly, but Marius is almost surprised it took so long to happen: Inspector Lyf has just come in to question them about a crime of theirs which is still open for investigation--it involved less explosions and more bureaucracy than was their usual, so it‘a a bit trickier to prove it was them as long as they refuse to confess--and as the Midgardian snatches the latest of Marius’s violins out of his hands with an exasperated huff and a roll of their amber eyes, he is overtaken with a sudden, rather violent coughing fit. He turns away slightly, bringing his hands up to cover his mouth, and Ivy steps between the two of them.

Lyf tries to look at him around Ivy, a single eyebrow raised in some approximation of concern. “Von Raum, are you--?”

“He’s fine,” Ivy cuts them off quickly. “I’m honestly getting a bit tired, so--I confess, this one was on me.”

The sudden confession is enough to draw the Inspector’s skeptical gaze onto her and away from Marius as he finally gets up whatever was choking him, pulling his hands away to see--

A daffodil. Just one, whole and, although damp, startlingly intact. Panic rises within him along with something else--vines, perhaps, growing inside him as he hears Lyfrassir’s voice behind him. He can't bring himself to focus on the words, but it’s the melody of it, the flow of their sentences and the shape of their sounds. 

_Fuck. Fuck, shit, absolute bloody fucking bollocks to this--_

Raphaella hisses in his ear. “Put it away, Marius, you pining sack of stupid.”

He does, turning back towards Lyfrassir and Ivy, whose conversation has become significantly more heated. Marius wishes he could focus on the stuffy nonsense no doubt coming out of Lyf’s mouth instead of trying to memorize the shape of it, to imagine what it might feel like against his own.

...It’s ridiculous, obviously.

Lyf is a fucking _cop_ , for starters. Which, to be frank, isn’t a great look. ACAB and all that. But, Marius has to admit (to himself, at least) that Lyf is a pretty _sexy_ bastard. Not that it matters, because Marius wouldn’t have even admitted it to himself if there were any other way to explain the vines creeping up his throat.

“The hell do you see in them, anyway?” Raphaella asks one night after watching him heave up a pile of acacias that might have been white before being covered in his blood. He can only groan weakly in response.

“There’s only a 26% chance that he’s put enough thought into it to be able to answer that.” Ivy’s tone is part teasing, but he can tell she trusts her own assessment. Marius is almost offended; as it happens, he’s thought of almost nothing else of late, trying to find the answer to that very question. Not like there’s much else to do in prison, he tells himself. Anyway, it works just as well that they believe his feelings to be unexamined. Less to tease him about, at least.

He keeps expecting something to change. He’s not sure why he expects that. Lyf comes in far less frequently than he’d like, and he finds himself dragging out the active cases they’re working on just so they’ll have a reason to come back. They clearly hate it--hate _him,_ he reminds himself as he pulls a vine of morning glories out of his throat, wincing when he feels the _snap_ of the vine breaking off somewhere down his windpipe. Every interaction they have is dripping with disdain on Lyf’s part, and Marius just keeps playing into their _stupid_ bickering, despite everything he wants to say. Honestly, it’s for the best. He knows that. Lyfrassir might be cute, but they’re still _mortal_ , and Marius is _not_ (at least, not in a convenient way), and the train will arrive eventually. What the hell is Marius supposed to do, anyway? Sweep this _bloody_ cop off their feet? Seduce them with his ability to commit terrible acts of violence and his gravel-filled voice? Unlikely. So, he goes through the motions.

“Von Raum.” Lyf’s wary greeting each time they come to visit the cell.

“ _Inspector_ Lyf.” Marius plays into exactly what they expect him to be. He goes out of his way to be obnoxious, making sure Lyf stays at a distance, and if Lyf just happens to be really fucking cute when they’re frustrated...well. Marius can hardly complain when his mouth is full of beautiful balsams.

It goes on like this for almost two years before someone--Ivy--finally brings up getting the flowers removed.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Ivy, Marius, and Raphaella are cuddled up together, staring at the ceiling, Marius’s coughing keeping all three of them up.

Marius laughs around the red petals sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Only when I breathe.”

Ivy hums in response. “I’m 62% certain that if you requested the surgery, the prison would acquiesce.”

He frowns. “That’s low for a typically-fatal disease.”

“Technically we earned the death penalty. It was only that high because I factored in the likelihood that Lyfrassir would try to persuade their superiors out of sheer decency.”

There’s a rattling in his chest at the mention of the Inspector. “It’s not going to perma-kill me; hardly see the point.”

“The point, I think,” Raphaella says, “Is to _not_ be in constant choking pain.”

Marius shrugs. “Wouldn’t they just grow back?”

“Removal of the flowers typically removes the feelings that inspired them as well,” Ivy murmurs.

Something about that which Marius refuses to examine turns his stomach. Still, he thinks about the smallest hint of a smirk he caught Lyf giving when they heard Ivy bullying him. He liked to imagine what the smile would look like if it was inspired by--by something other than their _hatred_ of him.

“I think they’d grow back,” Marius murmurs. Ivy hums in a vaguely affirmative manner and Raphaella curls against him, settling in for sleep, but every breath he takes makes the leaves on the vines crawling up his windpipe tickle the inside of his throat, and he imagines that he’ll be awake for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Lyf frantically space-googles polyamory and police ethics)

Lyfrassir Edda has had Hanahaki disease three times by the time they turn twenty years old, and while that sets a pretty poor precedent in and of itself, with them racking up two more cases by graduation, they didn’t think they’d ever have an _entire garden_ growing inside them at once. Let alone, for _their prisoners._

They’re in their office when it first happens, looking over a case file. They’ve been fighting off a cold ( _“You’re working yourself to death,”_ they hear their ex say. _“Kissing you’s like snogging a corpse.”_ ) so the cough that rattles in their lungs with wet weight doesn’t even faze them enough initially to look away from the file in front of them—an arson case, with culprits they are all too familiar with—until they feel at the back of their throat not mucus, but slick, smooth petals. The taste of pollen makes their head go dizzy and they just have the presence of mind to grab the bin before the triggering of their gag reflex combined with the sudden wave of anxiety causes them to heave up the all-too-familiar yellow of daffodils. 

They reach from their phone to call their doctor before the last bile-coated blossom is even out of their lips. They’re not pathetic enough to actually have her on speed dial, but having a Hanahaki specialist saved to your contacts is still a special kind of sad. Their finger is over the call button before they pause to wonder just who these flowers are _for_ , anyway. They’re in here alone, they shouldn’t—

Their gaze and their stomach drops to the paper open on the table in front of them. Marius-von-fucking-Raum smirks up at them from his mugshot (the photographer couldn’t convince him to deadpan long enough to get a serious photo) and suddenly they’re throwing up again, but this time it’s mostly bile and espresso with a few loose petals here and there. 

They glance at the small mirror on the wall near the door. Their reflection looks haggard and dazed, and they scowl at the bastard. “Bloody unprofessional twat,” they mutter, less malice in their words than they intend.

They glance at their phone for a moment. The doctor’s contact is still open. 

They lock the screen. They probably have some localized pesticide capsules left from last time (a coworker laughed a bit too brightly at one of their dry remarks and their heart fluttered as branches began to tear at the lining of their lungs) and they do _not_ want to answer any questions about this. 

They’re out of pesticide. 

It’s just as well, they suppose; it might be safe enough for occasional use, but it’s about as good for you as a Plan B pill, so it’s really not ideal for long-term exposure. And the feelings will go away with time, obviously. They fall in love quickly, sure, but they have terrible taste, so they can generally make themself get over it before things get too bad. Any day now, they remind themself as they hack bloody tiger lilies into a handkerchief after confiscating another of M-von Raum’s violins (it’s not that they dislike the music, it’s that he shouldn’t have an instrument in _jail_ ), _any day_ they’re going to take a shuddering breath, cough, and find their lungs clear of briar. 

It’s almost a relief when they come into work one day to hear that the von Raum, la Cognizi, and Alexandria have all escaped, having blasted a hole through the wall in the night. _Almost_ being the operative word, because apart from the pain in his chest as the vines there _twist_ , no sooner have they gone into their boss’s office than they are being handed a note, apparently left in the cell. 

_Inspector Lyf - come alone._ Then some coordinates. Not signed, but the meticulous penmanship speaks to Ivy. 

“Surely you can’t be serious.” Lyf holds the note back out towards the chief, but the asshole just stares at them. “Sir, they’re dangerous.”

“You’ve spent plenty of time in their cell without protection. They’ve not hurt you yet.”

“They’ve been in a controlled environment!”

He cocks an eyebrow at their use of the word _controlled_. “We don’t have any better options, Edda.”

Lyf correctly reads between the lines to hear what he means, which is that they’re expendable, and they know well enough by this point that if they try to refuse to see those fuckers they’re just going to be written up for insubordination. They bite their tongue even as wormwood blossoms tickle the back of their throat. 

When they arrive at the coordinates, packing heat since the note didn’t say they couldn’t, they’re really not certain what they’re expecting. A wheel of torture, maybe? A big stick for them to skewer themself on? Whatever it is, they certainly aren’t expecting—

“Are you hungry, Inspector?” Raphaella pulls a chair out for them around what looks like a candlelit dinner for three but cannot possibly be that. Still, they sit down, dazed and baffled. 

“I—I’m not—“

“That wasn’t a real question, Inspector.” Ivy’s gaze is unreadable. “Unless you’ve undergone extraordinary changes to your lifestyle in the past 38 hours, there is a 89% chance that you haven’t eaten today.”

“I’ve had coffee,” they refute weakly. They also unintentionally ingested some red clover earlier, but they elect not to bring that up. 

“You’re eating.” Raphaella pushes their seat in, and they don’t feel as trapped as they probably should. In front of them is a delicious-smelling pasta with oil, cheese, and what smells like lemon and pepper. Could be poisoned, they suppose. They take a bite anyway. 

“What exactly is the point of this?” They eye the food and the women with equal dubiousness. 

“Marius wouldn’t stop complaining about how frail you seem lately,” Ivy says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “And I anticipated this would be as good a wake-up call as any.”

“You broke out of jail.”

“Mhm.” Raphaella pours them a glass of mead. With cranberry, it looks like—their favorite. Bloody eavesdroppers. 

“To make me dinner?”

“Yes.”

They shouldn’t feel flattered, and this is a bad time for the flowers in their lungs to be acting up because they’re barely holding back a cough. “An officer _died_.”

“Only one?” Lyfrassir prays they’re reading too far into the disappointed tone in Ivy’s voice. Suddenly, they’re having to angle their body away from the table as violent hacking overtakes them, petals pushing up their throat and spilling out of their lips into the napkin they grabbed just in the nick of time and—

Daffodils. But that can’t be right, because the clovers were just this morning, they can’t have—

But, they spot a purple petal among the yellow. Marius’s flowers haven’t gone anywhere. 

“Lyfrassir? Are you alright?”

They are well and truly fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally cannot recommend strongly enough that you google the symbolism of the flowers I use jdjdjd


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius with hanahaki what crimes will he commit

Marius von Raum is a dead man. Well, metaphorically, at least. His Mechanism ensures that even as his lungs burst with vines and blossoms, they keep breathing, keep stitching themselves back together. He had thought a bit of distance from the Inspector would give him a bit of breathing room.

“I think we ought to break out of here,” he’d said after making a valiant effort to cough up his lungs. 

“How do you figure?” Raphaella looked up at him from where she sat with her head in Ivy’s lap, having her hair braided. Her tone was far more amused than he’d thought was decent.

“We’ve been in here for decades now. Getting a bit dull, don’t you reckon?” He carefully doesn’t look in the direction of the toilet where he just flushed several bouquets’ worth of flowers.

Ivy snickered, but kindly kept her comments to herself. 

The breakout itself had been remarkably simple, all things considered. Most surfaces are vulnerable to explosions, and most people are vulnerable to bullets. It was afterwards that things got complicated.

Ivy and Raphaella had something they wanted to do without him. At least, that’s what he assumed, since they kissed him on both cheeks as they cut him in half before putting a bullet through his temple just to be thorough, and when he came to again he was alone. On one hand Raphaella has written, “See you soon, XOXO.” On the other, Ivy has drawn a distressingly accurate depiction of his own dick.

He’s not even sure how he ended up in front of an important-looking library. For a moment, he thinks maybe he’ll burn it down to spite Ivy. He won’t; it would be crossing a line and he knows it. Yet, he wanders in anyway, not fully certain why until he sees it. 

“It” being, in this case, trapped behind unreasonably thick glass, the original disc on which Arthur Conan Doyle recorded his drug-addled ramblings about mysteries which would eventually become the Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. The famed Arthur C.D. CD. Of course, no one but Brian has a CD player anymore, so now it’s functionally useless. He’s not even sure why there seem to be such weirdly high-tech security measures in place; it’s not like anyone would really steal something like that. Of course,  _ Marius _ is going to steal it, but that’s beside the point. 

As Marius strolls out of the museum fifteen minutes later holding the C.D. CD in one hand and his pistol in the other, dancing down the stairs to the rhythm of the alarms blaring behind him, he tries to convince himself that he just stole it to spite the pricks who protected this shitty recording more fiercely than they protected the snazzy centuries-old jacket he also nabbed on his way out. It’s no use, though; he hasn’t stopped choking on camellias since he laid eyes on it. 

As officers begin to swarm the building, he knows he’s going to surrender, to go back into the custody of the New Asgard Police. Vaguely, he wonders if he should have committed some more vehicle-related crimes, but somehow he’s certain whoever got stuck with him last time will draw the short straw yet again. He unloads a few clips into the cops anyway, just ‘cause, before yeeting his gun into the distance, where it would fire off randomly upon landing.

“Take me home, gaydies and gentlethems.” He puts his hands in the air and dons his most charming smile.

The police try to take the jacket and CD back, but after he literally bites off the finger of the first bastard who tries, they seem to decide it’s a problem for someone else. On the ride back to prison, he inspects the jacket a bit closer, studiously Not Looking at the CD. It’s a frilly thing; might have been purple at some point. Was probably owned by an aristocratic prat at some point. But now it’s owned by Marius, so even if its history doesn’t exactly scream gay rights, maybe Lyf will like it and Marius can get some rights anyway. 

Ivy and Raphaella are already in the cell when he gets back, and he would shoot them if he hadn’t thrown his fucking gun at a swarm of cops. Damnit.

“Enjoy your vacation?” Raphaella croons. 

“Fuck you,” Marius spits. “What did you even draw on me with? I got the note off, but the picture—“

“Don’t worry about it.”

Ivy stares at his stylish coat. “Is this coat your latest seduction technique or is it symbolic of you completely giving up on not only romance but also yourself?”

“I’ll be sure to grab you one next time.”

Ivy rolls her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. “Did you request Lyfrassir as your handler for the latest crime?”

He sputters for a moment. “Maybe.”

“There was a 82% chance of you doing that.”

Raphaella kisses his cheek. “Also they told us you did.”

Marius doesn’t care to identify the petals he chokes on at that, but they’re large and pink and it takes him a minute to get them off of his tongue. “When were they talking to you two? How long have you been back?”

“Oh, we only stopped out for dinner.” Raphaella walks back over to Ivy, who gives him a coy smile. 

“With the Inspector.”

Now yellow hyacinths join the fray. Marius has a whole damn garden party going on. “Right. Fucking fantastic. Thanks for leaving me out of that.”

“If you’d joined us, there was a 99.99% chance you’d choke to death in front of the Inspector and they would be quite likely to pick up on your condition if that happened.”

Marius glares at her, but it’s only because she’s right. 

He sits down with the others, worrying the case of the C.D. CD with his thumbs. Ivy covers one of his hands with one of hers, and he leans against her.

“Do you really think I should get the surgery?”

She kisses his temple. “Regardless of what I think, you’d regret it.”

He closes his eyes tightly as he feels his lungs grow tighter. As he takes a deep breath, he can almost smell the camellia blossoms. 

“You’ve made it very clear that I’m the only person you’ll talk to.” Lyfrassir sounds absolutely exasperated. Which is reasonable, Marius supposes: after all, they have just gotten yanked off of another case to come back and deal with yet another of Marius’s crimes. The museum heist was fun, as is teasing the good Inspector, but he imagines the paperwork accompanying both is significantly less so. “Why the hell can’t you bother someone else? This isn’t even my department.”

“Maybe I just enjoy your company, Inspector.” His tone comes off far more sincere than he means for it to, but they don’t seem to register it. They just scoff, although it’s interrupted by coughing. “You feeling alright?”

They wave him off, tucking a handkerchief into their vest pocket. “Yes, just a bit worn down. Because I’ve been working overtime trying to manage... _ this _ .” They gesture vaguely at Marius, which he is certain they don’t mean to be in any way flattering but is anyway. 

“Thank you, Inspector!”

“That’s not—ugh.” They rub their temples and Raphaella and Ivy giggle from where they’re sitting against the wall behind Marius. “Why did you even break out of here? You literally handed yourself over to police custody.”

“I wanted to see the museum.”

“Yes,  _ that _ —what were you even doing? Robbing museums is hardly your m.o.”

Marius bats his eyelashes. “And how do you know my m.o., Inspector? Are you a fan of mine?”

“I’m the head investigator on your criminal activities,” Lyf deadpans. Marius lets out a huff. 

“You have no sense of whimsy, Inspector Lyf.”

“Is that what you were doing when you stole—what, an old jacket and a detective story? Why would you even want that?”

“Detectives are sexy,” Marius blurts without thinking. Immediately, he feels flowers in his throat, and by now he doesn’t need to see them to know they’re pink lilies.  _ Embarrassment _ lilies, they’re called. Not on-the-nose at all. 

Lyf flushes and seems to choke at that—understandable, since it was inappropriate in a way Marius  _ tries _ to avoid. “How are you even going to listen to that thing?”

Still flustered, Marius shakes his head, mouth moving faster than his head. “I actually grabbed it for you. It was so overprotected they were asking for it, and I thought you might—“ He shuts his mouth to stop flowers and words from falling out. He’s not sure which would be worse at this point. He just holds out the case, and Lyf takes it, looking at it in confusion, then, with equal confusion, at his hand. They grab it and hold it up for scrutiny and Marius can’t  _ breathe _ . 

“Why is there a dick on your hand, von Raum?” They sound more baffled than anything else. If Marius opens his mouth to respond he’s fucked and he doesn’t know what could be worse than this—

“It’s his!” Ivy shouts from behind him. Lyf begins hacking violently in surprise and Marius spins around to glare bullets at her, but she and Raphaella just give him two thumbs up each and by the time he turns back around Inspector Lyfrassir Edda is gone. 

Relief and heartache plague him in equal measure, but he just rushes to the toilet and spills a crimson-stained rainbow of soft, bloody petals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again: cannot recommend looking into flower meanings enough dndhd


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyf dies. Sadly, they survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is,,, a short one. next chapter will be worse but then it'll get better, I'm no monster

Lyfrassir Edda dies alone in their ship on the way to Hoddmimis. They’re almost certain of it. They’ve been on the way out for a while now, anyway; they could outrun Yog Sothoth the unraveling of their reality, evidently, but not their own damn feelings. 

The one good thing about the Black Box ending up on their desk is that it gave them something to investigate that wasn’t  _ those three _ . That bought them a bit of time, at least, even if they got choked up on zinnias every time they glanced at von Raum’s “museum heist” file in their  _ unfinished _ stack. Even if their last meeting with them, to get answers, left them pulling thorned vines out of their throat just enough to trim them where they were beginning to creep into the back of their mouth. They didn’t have time to get the surgery before it was too late. They didn’t have time to get any more prescriptions, any more appointments, and when they went to declare their love to those three bastards they were gone altogether, and they were left standing in their empty cell coughing up Black Dahlias as they sobbed. 

And then, of course, it was just them floating through space alone, because they panicked and couldn’t think of anyone they could invite who’d listen to them in time while they were still on New Asgard. The second the distress calls began pouring in, of course, they could think of a million people they might have brought along with them, but it was too late. They stayed awake for three days straight, sitting in the cramped cockpit, eyes glued to their viewport, making themself listen to every last one of the last cries of the system they abandoned until at last they lost the signal altogether. They kept waiting for the thorns in their lungs to turn metaphorical, for their love to turn to hate, but they kept coughing peonies and carnations and bleeding-fucking-hearts. That last one they’d only ever read about. It was stupidly uncommon, because even people who got married rarely loved their spouses  _ truly _ unconditionally, but there they were, saying  _ passionate love rejected love unconditional love _ and making them cough themself bloody, making them cough themself faint, and they were so fucking tired they didn’t even have the energy to cut them back anymore. The pain in their lungs was so sharp they didn’t fucking care if they choked to death at this point. Their prisoners were going to fuck them over one last time, and they were going to die alone instead of with the rest of their system because they’d been too selfish to do anything different.

And they did die. They were almost certain. They felt the briar in their lungs pierce the fragile tissue, they choked, drowning in the only air in the vacuum of space, choking on blood and flower petals, too many to count, their colors lost to the crimson of their blood as they tried to breathe past everything only to find that the thorns had crept up their windpipe and each attempt tore at the inside of their throat, and their vision was blurring and the fluid they were coughing up had all kinds of colors in it and it had to be the petals peeking through their blood but there was also black and that had to be their vision fading as they blacked out and they would never wake up again except that they do.

They wake up.

They feel like absolute shit. Which is to be expected, maybe, but they feel like shit in an exciting new way they’ve never felt like shit before. They sit perfectly still for several minutes, staring out their viewport at the uncaring stars and trying to summon the energy to do literally anything else, before they note two things: first, that their breaths aren’t labored, and next, that the reason for that is that they aren’t  _ breathing _ . Upon noticing this, they take in a sharp breath, and it feels just as terrible as it has ever since they met those three assholes, but nothing new, really. They stop breathing, and didn’t feel the particular need to begin again. So. They almost certainly died. Getting their head around that takes a fair bit of time, and they find themself feeling oddly distanced from the whole reality of their circumstances. They take a deep, unnecessary breath, and begin to take inventory of their surroundings, and it’s that that shocks them into the reality of the moment.

When they look at their shirt and at the controls, it’s covered with a terribly familiar liquid, like tar shot through with every shade of every color, seeming to undulate when they look at it for any amount of time, urging them to look deeper, and they’re quite certain they’d like to be sick except they aren’t quite  _ there _ enough to feel the nausea that seems appropriate. Faintly, they wonder where the stuff came from, but they start to consider the options and the answer is so clear they refuse to speculate further. Their hands are slick with the stuff, and that bothers them very very much for reasons they don’t quite know and so they stumble from their chair, falling over their own feet as they are suddenly in the back of their ship scrubbing their hands scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing they won’t come clean they scrub them on towels with water with soap but their skin is stained rainbow when the tar comes off they scrub again and their hands are bleeding now except it’s not red it’s black-every-color-rainbow-punching-through-what-should-be-void and they feel so incredibly faint, maybe they should take some deep breaths, no bad mistake the thorns are still very much sticking through their lungs and now they’re coughing up the unbecoming of reality and mandrake blooms and chunky aspen and  _ fuck _ they should have stayed in Yggdrasil to die this was the universe’s way of righting itself.

Their tears are still right. They’re clear, and they cut through the horrible colors on their hands, and they could really get used to the normalcy of sobbing if it didn’t also necessitate  _ breathing _ a bit. They can’t avoid staring at their hands forever, at the colors there, and once they calm down enough to not need to breathe anymore, they just stare at the undulating colors and let themself lose themself in it, because why the fuck not at this point? What do they have left to live for? What do they have left to protect? There was probably a very good reason they didn’t want to stare into the gateway to the Other splattered on their open palms but it doesn’t matter nothing matters and at some point they feel the press of vines winding around them, thorns digging into their skin, petals of every color obscuring their vision, but colors are colors are colors and they’re too far gone to notice anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up with the meanings you find as well, but for ease, here are the meanings I'm using:
> 
> zinnias - "I mourn your absence"  
> black dahlias - betrayal  
> peonies - anger  
> carnations - "I miss you"  
> bleeding heart - passionate/rejected/unconditional love  
> mandrake - fear, horror  
> aspen - fear, lamentation


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius comes apart, and then comes back together.

Marius is beginning to think the whole immortality thing was a mistake. Sure, it seemed like a fun idea at first, and there was certainly some appeal in the novelty of the whole thing. How many people get to be immortal, after all? That shit’s expensive. Of course Marius jumped at the first opportunity to kiss death goodbye. When it turned out that meant kissing any meaningful concept of life goodbye too, well, it was too late to change his mind so he leaned into it. Well, first he tested the effectiveness quite thoroughly, but it was decidedly too late, so he didn’t see the point in trying to cling to things that were impossible for him now.

Until he met Lyfrassir bloody Edda, and he wanted to cling to a great deal of things. His feelings. Them. Other sappy shit he couldn’t ever admit aloud to anyone but maybe Brian. Which was absolutely fucked, because Lyfrassir Edda was going to die. Not just in the vague, nebulous way that all his flings were going to die in the future after Marius got bored of them, but  _ presently _ , because every second he spent with Lyf was a second closer to the train arriving, and once it arrived he could  _ feel _ the Vibes radiating off of them, even weirder than their usual ones. At that point, he knew the both of them were well and truly fucked. Lyf, because there was no way he’d ever convince the others to take them along for the ride when they knew the Inspector would bring the Bifrost with them wherever they went. Marius, because he felt his love for them with every breath he took, sharp pain and dull ache alike reminding him that he was helpless against his love for them, that it was powerful enough to kill him if he were lucky enough to remember how to die. 

He tried to bring them out of the system anyway, but no sooner had he thought about them than he’d been overwhelmed by a horrible hacking fit that doubled him over until he was seeing double, blood-coated sunflowers, not just petals, pouring out of his mouth onto the floor and he became dimly aware that  _ oh fuck he’s dying _ . Then he wasn’t aware of anything at all. Then he opens his eyes in the middle of an orgy.

“What. The fuck.” He’s tied to a chair and he’s naked, but no one’s touching him, thank  _ god. _

“Ah, Marius! How nice of you to join us,” Jonny pants from where he’s riding Ashes’ strap.

“How long was I–” Marius is interrupted by Brian straddling his lap with an easy smile. “Oh, uh, hi.”

“Good to have you back, Marius.” Brian leans in for a kiss which is softer than any he’s had in a while, and he leans into it for just a minute before pulling back.

“Good to see you, Brian. Carmilla.”

At the use of his safeword, Brian immediately jumps off of him, making quick work of his restraints and fixing him with a look of concern. “Are you okay?”

“Not in the slightest. I’ve never been less horny in my life, including  _ childhood _ . Never in my life, Brian.” He stands, wishing he had some goddamn  _ clothes _ with which to cover his for-once-in-his-life-flaccid dick. “I’m going to fuck off to my room and try to forget I exist for a while. See you when I inevitably remember.”

Brian clearly wants to discuss this further, but frankly that seems like a him problem, and Tim is already on his knees in front of the man so he doubts it’ll trouble him for too much longer.

Marius does an embarrassingly shoddy job forgetting he exists. In fact, he can’t stop thinking about the fact that he exists, that he’ll never stop existing, that Lyfrassir is gone, that he might have saved them if he wasn’t crippled by his own goddamn love for them. He thinks about that a lot, too; that his love for them is what doomed them, in the end. This is why he’s stuck to immortals with his feelings. The other Mechanisms never made flowers grow in his lungs. Well, Raphaella did once, but that was an experiment and she had rewarded him  _ handsomely _ . They never died in a way they couldn’t recover from. They left him often, and he left them, but they always found their way back to each other. He left Lyf, whether or not he meant to, and so he should be able to leave them behind in his mind and his heart, but his pillow is covered in asclepias, each tiny blossom taunting him even before he looks them up, finds out they mean sad remembrance, that they mean  _ Let Me Go _ . He laughs quite hard at that, and doesn’t stop laughing even as the act brings up fresh blooms and fresh blood, because he  _ can’t _ let them go.

He doesn’t even know how long he spends in his room, gardening, but when he comes out even Jonny is a bit tense around him, which is borderline offensive. He doesn’t know what would help him feel better. Probably nothing could. But everyone looking at him like some lovesick idiot  _ certainly _ isn’t helping. Just because he’s a lovesick idiot doesn’t mean he wants to be  _ perceived _ as such.

He’s leaning against a viewport, tracing the place where cold steel meets colder invisisteel, when he whispers something he’s sure will get octokittens sicced on him. “How did you get over Nastya?” 

The Aurora doesn’t answer for a long while, and for a moment he thinks maybe she wasn’t paying attention or that she’s giving him the silent treatment. Then, she speaks, her voice a gentle hum singing through the metal beneath his fingertips.

_ “I didn’t.” _

If she were anyone else, he’d snark at her, say  _ helpful _ in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. But she’s the Aurora, and so he leans his head against the viewport and presses his hand flat against her wall. It’s the best he can think to do to convey that he understands when the magnitude of his own feelings must dwarf in comparison to her own.

He spends a lot of time there, just staring at the stars, wishing there were some way the narrative threads spinning his life could weave Lyf back into it when he sees a ship floating in space.

The details become fuzzy in retrospect. The thing was dead in the air, that much he can remember. Jonny wanted to ignore it, but Brian pointed out the salvage potential, and so they decided to go pick it up. Marius doesn’t even know why he ended up on the ship himself, except that the design was Midgardian and made pink camellias tickle the back of his throat. The inside was complete pitch darkness, but the moment light was shed, Marius can see a garden. It’s growing all over the controls, through the mechanical implements of the ship, into every nook and cranny, blooms and vines of every variety, and Marius doesn’t know exactly why he feels so strongly about pushing through the briar until he catches a glimpse of the person at the center of all of it.

“Lyfrassir,” he breathes. It’s all he can think to say before he processes the roots growing from their mouth, from their chest, out of their back, and just what they mean. Then he promptly breaks down crying, wrapping his arms around them like he never got to before, and it’s not the same they’re not responding he can’t reach them through the brush, and he doesn’t know who they loved but they deserved to be loved back and it’s too late now but he loves them so fucking much and he’s loved them for so long and he wishes that could save them and he doesn’t know how much of his thoughts he’s babbled out loud but the flowers are gone, and Lyfrassir is empty in his arms, and he can’t figure out what this means but he says his I-love-yous in hot words whispered along their neck like a holy brand as well as in the red tulips that are growing out of his mouth faster every moment he spends holding them, and it’s been so dark in here but now that the others can get in here with their torches he sees the colors and he squeezes them tighter, and to his surprise, 

They squeeze back.

“I love you,” he says, has been saying for so long his throat is getting raw from both the effort and the branches. They don’t respond, but they had Hanahaki too before he told them he loved them and now the flowers are gone and he realizes all at once, with more certainty than their words could have ever granted him.

For the first time in the better part of a decade, Marius takes a deep breath, and finds his lungs clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dw they'll communicate eventually. angst ain't over yet kiddos. don't be fooled
> 
> sunflowers - adoration, loyalty  
> asclepias - sad remembrance, hope from sorrow, "let me go"  
> pink camellias - "longing for you"  
> red tulips - declaration of love

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you need anything tagged, please just let me know.  
> If you enjoyed this, please donate some kudos and comments to my gay rights fund <3  
> Take care of yourself!


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